On Saturday afternoon, 9 March 2013, five days after the Kenyan general election, Isaak Hassan, Chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), announced the final results of the 4 March polls, declaring Uhuru Kenyatta the president elect. Later the same day, Raila Odinga, Kenyatta’s main contester and runner-up in the presidential race, restated his allegations of irregularities in the voting and tallying process – complaints that have now been rejected by the Kenyan Supreme Court. International observer missions presented positive statements and, despite the flood of pre-election predictions to the contrary, the polls were conducted in a largely peaceful manner, with an impressive turnout of over 80%. The Daily Nation dubbed the election “one of the most closely watched polls in Sub-Saharan Africa since the post-Apartheid 1994 elections in South Africa.”⁽²⁾ Indeed, this was, in many ways, a remarkable and highly unusual event.

This paper tells the story of Kenya’s 2013 elections. It starts with analysis of how a number of crucial factors, including the impact of the 2007-2008 elections, the Kenyan political context, the adoption of a new constitution, and the presence of International Criminal Court (ICC) charges against leading contenders, contributed to the fear of violence that dominated the pre-election discourse. It is argued that while these factors contributed to the highly dramatic and critical nature of the elections, they also served to delimit and reduce the potential significance of this event as a mechanism of democratic change and political imagination. Hence, despite the peaceful outcome, Kenya’s 2013 elections can effectively be understood as a case displaying the detrimental effects of violence and fear on the process of democratic elections.

The legacy of 2007 and the fear of old politics

Elections are important and often spectacular events, usually considered newsworthy, with dramatic linguistic representations as commonplace. In anticipation of the general election in Ghana in December 2012, for example, the Ghanaian Chronicle reported on the atmosphere permeating the country in almost war-like terms, stating that “[w]ith D-day for Election 2012 barely 24 hours away, voters across the length and breadth of Ghana yesterday, began feverish preparations to be part of the four-yearly thumb revolution.”⁽³⁾ In the run-up to the Kenyan elections, such dramatic images were expected to take on a much more literal meaning.

The risk of violence seemed to infuse much of the pre-election atmosphere as it was continuously underlined by commentators, both within and outside of the country. International organisations such as Human Rights Watch and The International Crisis Group, for example, issued special reports that deemed the risk of political violence and human rights violations to be both “perilously high” and “unacceptably high.”⁽⁴⁾ The fear of violence was further accompanied and fuelled by a general sense of unpredictability and uncertainty, stemming from the anticipated closeness of the presidential race, as well as legacies from the 2007-2008 election and post-election crisis. This pre-election set-up and atmosphere was captured well in an Institute for Security Studies (ISS) piece on 28 February, in which the institution stated that “The difference between carnage and peaceful and free elections will be determined by the balance between the changes and continuities that characterise the Kenya of today as opposed to that of 2007–08.”⁽⁵⁾ Indeed, it was some of these changes and continuities that powered the dramatic build-up of the election and that led some to characterise it as the most complex and important election in the history of the country.

The legacy and memory of the 2007 elections therefore provided a fierce reminder of what was at stake as they served as a backdrop against which the current situation was compared and interpreted. The impact of those elections and their violent aftermath, which have come to be known as the ‘Kenya crisis’ as it entailed the death of over 1,000 people and saw 600,000 more displaced, can hardly be overestimated.⁽⁶⁾ In this regard, those elections helped to trigger a number of important changes and processes that rendered the political and institutional context of the 2013 elections radically different from that of 2007. Surely, one of the things that the 2007 elections made apparent is the importance of not reducing politics to elections. As pointed out by Jeffery Paller, elections are not fixed events that occur in a political vacuum, but they simply provide the context for a host of other factors to coalesce.⁽⁷⁾

A crucial factor, contributing to the dramatic set-up of the election, was the fact that it was expected to be so tightly contested. Two major factions were established in the run-up to the presidential race, namely the Jubilee Alliance – an alliance between presidential candidate Kenyatta, son of Founding president Jomo Kenyatta, and his running-mate William Ruto; and the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) Alliance – a partnership between presidential hopeful Odinga, the sitting Prime Minister, and his running-mate Kalonzo Musyoka. The formation of alliances was interpreted as carrying both positive and negative connotations, where the single most highlighted feature of the political culture in Kenya concerned the significance of ethnicity. The importance of ethnic interests and affiliations run deep in Kenyan politics,⁽⁸⁾ and, as in prior elections, all the leading presidential candidates (as well as their running-mates) were understood to represent specific ethnic groups and mobilised voters along the corresponding ethnic lines. This continuation of the ‘politics of the past’ was seen as potentially detrimental to the prospects of peaceful elections because of its polarising effect on the electorate.⁽⁹⁾

However, the political context was also very different this time around as ethnic dynamics seemed somewhat more fluid and diverse, given the formation of the Jubilee Alliance. Moreover, public mobilisation initiatives – aimed at raising awareness of the importance of peaceful and responsible elections – were carried out by civil society organisations and the media in the run up the polls, whilst institutional reforms and new policy frameworks were also put in place.⁽¹⁰⁾ The question everyone asked, however, was if enough had been done.

New constitution

Another complicating factor that fuelled tensions ahead of the election was the fact that it was to be conducted under a new constitution. Adopted in 2010, this new constitution reconfigured the organisation of political power in Kenya – which is generally considered to have contributed to the 2007-2008 violence – by reducing the power of the president through a system of checks and balances and devolving power to 47 counties.⁽¹¹⁾ The 47 counties consequently represent the introduction of a new level of governance, in turn requiring the election of a number of new representatives, including governor, assembly and senator to a newly established upper house – the Senate.⁽¹²⁾ Additionally, the new constitution has allowed for a strengthened judiciary to emerge, as well as the creation of a number of new institutions for the management of elections and electoral disputes, including the IEBC.⁽¹³⁾

On the one hand, the ‘constitution factor’ was regarded as a positive sign, as it encapsulated much of the reform process undertaken since 2008 and accentuated the very different institutional context that has evolved since. On the other hand, however, the added complexity of the elections, with voting for six representatives at different levels of governance and the untested nature of the new institutional set-up, increased fears of irregularities and so was a source of uncertainty too. The role and capacity of the IEBC captured the concern of many commentators who cautioned against insufficient preparations, which might serve to undermine voters’ confidence in the prospects of a free and fair poll.⁽¹⁴⁾

ICC charges

If the new constitution added complexity to the elections, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) charges against Kenyatta and his running mate Ruto, certainly added controversy. The charges, which they both deny, involve accusations of having co-perpetrated crimes against humanity during the post-election violence in 2007-2008.⁽¹⁵⁾ The ICC charges consequently influenced the electoral campaigns and general pre-election situation in a number of important ways. While the most direct expression of the ICC involvement was probably the uniting of Kenyatta and Ruto on a single Jubilee Alliance ticket – a move that proved to be absolutely decisive for the electoral outcome – the indictments were also used as a campaigning weapon in the hands of their political opponents. During one of the televised presidential debates, Odinga, front man of the CORD Alliance and Kenyatta’s main contester, delivered what quickly became a widely quoted phrase. He remarked that it would surely be problematic for Kenyatta to hold the presidency while defending himself in The Hague, saying that “you cannot run a government through Skype.”⁽¹⁶⁾

Kenyatta and Ruto did not shy away from politicising the charges however, and chose to utilise them in their own campaign. In an interview with Aljazeera, for example, Kenyatta stated that “if Kenyans do vote for us, it will mean that Kenyans themselves have questioned the process that has landed us at the International Criminal Court,” and continued to point out that “one thing that people always tend to forget is that Kenya is not a banana republic.”⁽¹⁷⁾ Kenyatta therefore damned ‘Western meddling’ in Kenyan affairs and, in a very skilful act of political manoeuvring, used the election almost as a referendum on the ICC.⁽¹⁸⁾ Indeed, the role of the ICC presented foreign governments and various international actors with the delicate dilemma of having to balance the respect for Kenyan sovereignty and democracy with the uncomfortable prospects of having to deal with a president internationally charged with crimes against humanity. The fragility of this balancing act was most clearly displayed in February 2013 when the United States (US) Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jonnie Carson, cautioned Kenyans that “choices have consequences,”⁽¹⁹⁾ clearly referring to the potential impacts of the choice of president on the diplomatic relations between the two countries. Such statements reinforced an already tense diplomatic situation and provided yet another reminder of the high stakes at play.

Peaceful polls, disputed outcome

With all these factors at play, it is tempting to agree on what historian David Branch characterised as a “collective psychosis” as many local and foreign commentators, “from President [Barrack] Obama and Kofi Annan down to the local diplomatic corps,” were inclined to advise Kenyans on how to vote – “most likely to no or ill effect.”⁽²⁰⁾ Two days before the election day, as a reaction to the flood of negative coverage from foreign correspondents, the Daily Nation published a fictional article citing the “growing concern that the demand for clichés is outstripping supply.”⁽²¹⁾ The deeply satirical piece seemed to capture the absurdity of the situation quite well: “As foreign correspondents fly in…we anticipate a run on ‘hotly contested’ and ‘neck to neck’, said an unemployed militant.”⁽²²⁾

Despite the widespread fears of violence, the elections and aftermath thereof turned out to be largely peaceful. Preliminary statements from the European Union (EU) mission, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the African Union (AU) and the Commonwealth observer groups all gave the polls a general ‘thumbs up’.⁽²³⁾ Instead, the main controversy concerned the various delays and technical problems that surrounded the voting and tallying process, with the role and performance of the IECB at centre stage.

Firstly, on polling day, a large number of the new Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits failed, forcing polling stations to manually confirm voters against the voter register, consequently delaying the voting process.⁽²⁴⁾ Secondly, once voting finished, the newly acquired electronic tallying system, aimed at ensuring fast and secure tabulation and transmission of results from polling stations to the IEBC headquarters in Nairobi, too suffered from technological issues, drastically slowing down the transmission of votes.⁽²⁵⁾

As the official results were finally announced by the IECB,⁽²⁶⁾ six days after election day, Kenyatta emerged victorious with 50.07% of the votes (6,173,433 votes), versus Odinga’s 43.31% (5,340,546 votes). The results indicated that, on the one hand, Kenyatta beat Odinga with a fairly comfortable margin and that the race was less tightly contested than expected. On the other hand, however, under the ‘50% + one vote’ rule, Kenyatta avoided a second round run-off against Odinga with the narrow margin of only a few thousand votes. Furthermore, despite the reportedly long queues and many hours of waiting in the sun at polling stations, the official turnout was established at a somewhat sensational 86%. Yet, on 16 March 2013, after having repeatedly stated their claims that the various failures of the IEBC led to irregularities in the electoral process and that, by extension, Kenyatta did not receive the 50% plus one vote required to avoid a second round, the CORD alliance submitted a petition to the Supreme Court, challenging the credibility of the presidential outcome.⁽²⁷⁾ Exactly two weeks later, the Court rejected the challenges and upheld Kenyatta’s victory.⁽²⁸⁾ On 9 April 2013, Kenyatta will be sworn in as Kenya’s fourth president since independence in 1963.

Concluding remarks: The fear of violence and the construction of elections as stereotypes

Whatever happens during the post-election period in the coming months, it is clear that the Kenyan elections defied and contradicted many of the (negative) predictions that preceded it, most notably by avoiding major incidents of violence and any sort of widespread mayhem or general institutional collapse. Contrasting the highly dramatic build-up with the largely peaceful fallout reveals that the story of Kenya’s 2013 elections can be understood in terms of two interrelated but contradictory narratives.

On the one hand, they represent a critical moment, formed as a number of unique factors and dynamics coalesced, and the significance of which can hardly be overstated. Although it might reasonably be argued that the massive attention attracted created a disproportionate and overly negative atmosphere, it is also clear that some of the key factors highlighted in the pre-election discourse turned out to be decisive for the fallout of the electoral process as well as for the preliminary outcome of the presidential race. Indeed, it is likely that the immense pressure, foreign and domestic, on various actors, such as the media and the political candidates, to maintain peace and refrain from potentially violence-provoking behaviour, contributed to the peaceful conduction of the elections. The political context and the formation of the alliance between Kenyatta and Ruto seem to have been decisive, not only by way of attracting enough support from the Kikuyu and Kalenjin ethnic groups to secure the win, but also by uniting those historically polarised groups and reducing the risk of a repeat of the 2007-2008 clashes. Similarly, the ICC charges had a dual effect: firstly, by contributing to the formation of the coalition between the two indictees in the first place, and, secondly, through a skilful strategic act of ‘re-branding’ the charges, effectively uniting voters in support of the defendants against foreign interference.⁽²⁹⁾ Moreover, the new constitution and the reformed institutional context turned out to be critical, most obviously, and in line with many pre-election predictions, concerning the role and capacity of the IECB. Finally, the credibility of the strengthened judiciary, and the confidence in the Supreme Court in particular, now faces a momentous test.

On the other hand, however, Kenya’s 2013 elections represent an instance when the importance and function of democratic elections were radically reduced and diminished, bereft of its significance as a means for political change. Elections are important to the democratic process because they offer the electorate an opportunity to choose between different political options and, by extension, grant the people the power to decide how and by whom they are to be ruled.⁽³⁰⁾ Hence, the issue of choice is central to democracy. However, as the fear of violence so heavily dominated the pre-election discourse and the electoral process, and the ‘collective psychosis’, fuelled by memories of the past, rendered the event so hugely important that it was also accompanied by an obsession with the need for peace. Ironically, this emphasis on the importance of peaceful polls – ‘the peace lobotomy’ in the words of one tweeter ⁽³¹⁾ – effectively fixed the meaning of the elections to this very objective. Consequently, as the elections became all about the fear of violence and the maintaining of peace, they did so largely at the expense of pretty much everything else – most notably, politics and choice. In the absence of political imagination and choice, elections become a form of stereotype; a limited and narrow version of a complex and multifaceted phenomenon.

Furthermore, it is important to note that the choices that actually were presented to the electorate were mainly representatives of the highly entrenched political elites that continue to dominate Kenyan politics. As one commentator put it, “any Kenyan who went to sleep soon after independence 50 years ago, and woke up last weekend will be forgiven for quickly telling themselves: ‘I haven’t missed much – Kenyatta is still fighting Odinga!’”⁽³²⁾ With the fear of violence serving as an effective diversion in the electoral context, from the continued need for political, social, and economic change and development, democracy runs the risk of losing much of its relevance to the great majority of Kenyans.

This is not to suggest that the risks of violence were not real or that the elections were not successful in the sense of maintaining peace. On the contrary, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has explained, the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. In this case, the risk of violence seems to have been, if not the only, at least the overarching story through which all other stories were interpreted and understood. Perhaps most importantly, this dynamic underlines the detrimental effects of violence on the process of democratic elections. As the fear of violence becomes the fear of politics, and elections are depoliticised for the sake of peace, they lose much of their significance as a mechanism of political change.

Written by Fredrik Bruhn ⁽¹⁾

NOTES:

(1) Contact Fredrik Bruhn through Consultancy Africa Intelligence's Elections and Democracy Unit ( elections.democracy@consultancyafrica.com ).This CAI discussion paper was developed with the assistance of Keri Leicher and was edited by Liezl Stretton.
(2) ‘History is made as IEBC declares Kenyatta’s son President-elect’, Daily Nation, 10 March 2013, http://www.nation.co.ke.
(3) ‘Election fever grips the nation’, Ghanaian Chronicle, 6 December 2012, http://ghanaian-chronicle.com.
(4) ‘High stakes: Political violence and the 2013 elections in Kenya’, Human Rights Watch, February 2013, http://www.hrw.org; ‘Kenya’s 2013 elections’, International Crisis Group, Africa report Nr 197, 17 January 2013, http://www.crisisgroup.org.
(5) Dersso, S.A., ‘The possibility of peaceful and free elections in Kenya’, Institute for Security Studies, 28 February 2013, http://www.issafrica.org.
(6) Abrahamsen, R. and Cheeseman, N., ‘Kenya virtual issue’, African Affairs, 12 February 2013, http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org.
(7) Paller, J., ‘Five simple points to take away from the 2013 Kenyan elections’, African Arguments, 9 March 2013, http://africanarguments.org.
(8) Branch, D., ‘Kenya, between hope and fear’, Open Democracy, 1 March 2013, http://opendemocracy.net.
(9) Dersso, S.A., ‘The possibility of peaceful and free elections in Kenya’, Institute for Security Studies, 28 February 2013, http://www.issafrica.org.
(10) Ibid.
(11) Abrahamsen, R. and Cheeseman, N., ‘Kenya virtual issue’, African Affairs, 12 February 2013, http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org; Dersso, S.A., ‘The possibility of peaceful and free elections in Kenya’, Institute for Security Studies, 28 February 2013, http://www.issafrica.org.
(12) ‘Kenya’s 2013 elections’, International Crisis Group, Africa report Nr 197, 17 January 2013, http://www.crisisgroup.org.
(13) Ibid.
(14) Anyimadu, A., ‘Kenya’s elections: Rebuilding reputation’, Chatham House, 22 February 2013, http://www.chathamhouse.org; Barkan, J.D., ‘Electoral violence in Kenya’, Council on Foreign Relations, Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 17, January 2013, http://www.cfr.org.
(15) ‘Background’, International Criminal Court Kenya Monitor, http://www.icckenya.org.
(16) Okwembah, D., ‘Did Kenya presidential debate make a difference?’, BBC Africa, 12 February 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk.
(17) ‘Uhuru Kenyatta: Not a banana republic’, Aljazeera, 23 January 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com.
(18) ‘Did the ICC help Uhuru Kenyatta win Kenyan election?’, BBC, 11 March 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk.
(19) Lough, R., ‘Western powers congratulate Kenya on poll, not Kenyatta’, Reuters, 9 March 2013, http://www.reuters.com; Njagi, M., ‘US warns over choice of president’, Standard Digital, 8 February 2013, http://www.standardmedia.co.ke.
(20) Branch, D., ’Kenya, between hope and despair’, Open Democracy, 1 March 2013, http://opendemocracy.net.
(21) ‘Foreign reporters armed and ready to attack Kenya’, Daily Nation, 2 March 2013, http://www.nation.co.ke.
(22) Ibid.
(23) ‘Preliminary statement of the EU Election Observation Mission in Kenya’, EU Election Observation Mission to Kenya 2013, 6 March 2013, http://www.eueom.eu; ‘UN human rights monitoring team praises Kenya for successful election process’, UN News Centre, 15 March 2013, http://www.un.org; ‘Poll observers laud Kenya elections’, Daily Nation, 6 March 2013, http://www.nation.co.ke.
(24) Ayele Dersso, S., ‘Technical problems threatening to spoil Kenya’s smooth election process’, African Arguments, 6 March 2013, http://africanarguments.org.
(25) Ibid.; Taylor, M., ‘Kenya election results delayed by 'technical difficulties'’, The Guardian, 6 March 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk.
(26) ‘Summary of 2013 presidential election results declared on 9/3/2013’, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, 9 March 2013, http://www.iebc.or.ke.
(27) ‘Supreme Court publishes Cord petition ahead of hearing’, The Star, 19 March 2013, http://www.the-star.co.ke.
(28) ‘Kenya: Supreme Court upholds Kenyatta victory’, AllAfrica, 30 March 2013, http://allafrica.com.
(29) ‘Did the ICC help Uhuru Kenyatta win Kenyan election?’, BBC, 11 March 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk.
(30) Obi, C.I., ‘No choice, but democracy: Pricing the people out of politics in Africa’, Department of Peace and Conflict Research Uppsala University and Nordic Africa Institute, 2008.
(31) Gathara, P., ‘The monsters under the house’, Gathara’s World, 10 March 2013, http://gathara.blogspot.se.
(32) Warungu, J., ‘Letter from Africa: Kenya passes electoral test - but what next?’, BBC, 12 March 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk.